


Somehow Now

by thefreakfox



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (also sort of), (sort of), Angst, Comic Book Science, Discussion of mental illness, M/M, Memory Loss, Parallel Universes, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, So much angst, but i promise it's gonna have a happy ending, discussion of conditioning, discussion of psychotic breaks, discussion of suicide, it's really hard to tag without spoilering the fuck out of this, mind altering (is that even a thing?), no one dies tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3591861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefreakfox/pseuds/thefreakfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wakes up and –<br/>„My name is James Buchanan Barnes. I am twenty-nine years old. I am in Brooklyn. Steve Rogers doesn’t exist.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was walking home one night, I was a little bit drunk, and The Streets' "Lock the Locks" came on - and suddenly I had this great idea about two universes that weren't quite the same, that something was missing, and that the person who was in the "wrong" universe knew it, but didn't know exactly what was wrong.  
> and because I was reading so many Stucky fics at that time, I thought "Hey, that would be an awesome plot for a Stucky fic!".  
> I told buttheyrebrothers about it, and wham, there you go.
> 
> before you start reading, here are some things I thought are important to know:  
> \- SHIELD still exists, but a bit different than in the TV series or the MCU. Just to avoid any confusion, it's not a big part of the plot.  
> \- everybody lives, yay!  
> \- it's set circa 4 yrs after TWS  
> \- Bucky is okay again (even if he doesn't seem like it at the beginning). I am not going into detail much about how he got better, because there are other people who write these stories, and quite frankly, they are doing a much better job than I could ever do.  
> \- in the story, Bucky still has some problems. I've done my best to write about it, and buttheyrebrothers checked a lot of it, all remaining mistakes are mine; if I fucked up somewhere or offended anyone with any incorrect depictions of mental illness, please let me know and I will do my best to correct it. The same goes for missing tags - if you think there is something I should add, please tell me.
> 
> This is also a WIP, I've written seven chapters so far, and I think it's going to have about ten.

My eternal thanks and gratefulness go out to the wonderful [buttheyrebrothers](http://buttheyrebrothers.tumblr.com/), who also writes wonderful Wincest (go on tumblr and tell her how awesome she is, she totally deserves it!) - honestly, I couldn't have done this without you. You're the best beta and plot bunny breeder a writer can wish for.

If you want to talk to me, h[ere's my tumblr.](http://thefreakfox.tumblr.com/)

 

* * *

 

 

 _I had a funny dream and I came to screaming_  
_That I was in a funny house but it was kind of mine_  
_And I was with you only it wasn’t you_  
_It happened in the past but it was somehow now_  
[(The Streets – Lock the Locks)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KdrIG3SUuw)

 

** Chapter 1: Bucky **

 

He wakes up and –

„My name is James Buchanan Barnes. I am twenty-nine years old. I am in Brooklyn. Steve Rogers doesn’t exist.”

That’s been his mantra for the last four years, and by now he’s so used to it that the words fall out of his mouth before he’s really registered that he’s awake.

_Steve Rogers doesn’t exist._

He needs to remind himself daily of it, too scared that he might slip up again; and he can’t let that happen. He can’t let his family down again. He barely remembers it, but the story has been retold so many times (not so much by his family, but very excessively by his therapist, Dr Simmons): Four years ago, he had suffered a psychotic break and stolen a Harley. The Harley and him (well, most of him) had fallen down a bridge. His left arm hadn’t made it. To deal with the trauma of losing an arm, he’d made up a person called Steve Rogers. This Steve Rogers then (according to Bucky during his second psychotic break) had convinced him to jump off the same bridge again. That had been two years ago, and while he didn’t lose another limb the second time around, he had broken both his legs and lost the last shred of trust his family probably had had in him.

Whenever he was sitting in Simmons’ office (she had once offered that he could call her Jemma, but James had flat-out refused), he got the violent urge to tell her two things:

_1)_ _Steve Rogers had been with him before his first psychotic break, they both had just been better at hiding it._

_2)_ _Steve Rogers was real and did, in fact, exist. They just hadn’t found a way yet to contact each other again that did not end up with Bucky trying to kill himself._

James knew that everyone thought he was crazy. James also knew that they were probably right, at least where some things were concerned.

But really, it just made him angry when people called him Bucky. Only Steve was allowed to do that, and he really couldn’t tell _that_ to his family, not when he had _them_ convinced that they had _him_ convinced that Steve didn’t exist.

He sits up in his bed and scratches the back of his neck. That last thought has nearly been a slip-up. He’s afraid of slip-ups. Dead afraid. And somehow he really wants to believe that Steve doesn’t exist, because it would make things easier. So he has this bargain with himself; he’s allowed a little bit of crazy, a little bit of believing in Steve, but not too much. But he also cannot let go of Steve, because as much as he wants to believe that Steve doesn’t exist, he also knows that it’s not true.

He stands up and goes to the bathroom. Relieves himself, washes his hands and stares into the mirror. His hair is getting long again, and the shadows under his eyes are getting darker. He’s not wearing his prosthetic yet, because he knows that wherever Steve is, as soon as he gets to be with Steve, there will be a better one waiting for him. There’s no use in getting used to something that subpar as the glorified plastic cone his doctor – Dr Fitz – calls a prosthetic.

“That’s the second slip-up this morning, dear,” he says to mirror-James and grimaces.

“You know what _that_ means, right? It means you have to make a deal for today.” Mirror-James doesn’t react. Much. He smiles a bit, James thinks. Huh. That means he’s also smiling.

“The deal for today is that I am not going to get angry when someone calls me Bucky,” he says, but before he can promise that to himself, he murmurs “but only three times because only Steve is allowed to call me Bucky.”

He brushes his teeth and washes his face and then goes downstairs to see whether his family is there or not. They feel very unreal, sometimes, so James is not always sure they are there when he wakes up. Sometimes they are not there quite simply because they are out, and since he doesn’t really have a sleeping pattern anymore, it’s not like he wakes up solely in the morning. On the other hand, they don’t really trust him to be alone anymore, so even if the flat appears empty, there is most probably someone somewhere.

He looks around and judges his surroundings. On a scale from one to ten, reality seems to be a solid seven on the realness scale today.

(When he told Simmons that he scales reality according to how real it seems, she looked worried. James hadn’t mentioned it again.)

He considers staying inside so he will definitely make good on his deal – if he keeps his deals, the slip-ups aren’t so bad, that’s what Steve told him the last time they talked – but he’s not allowed to do that.

“No holing up, no,” he murmurs to himself, “I need to go outside and talk to people, and I am not allowed to get angry when someone calls me Bucky,”

The _But only three times because only Steve is allowed to call me Bucky_ is left unsaid this time, because even though reality is a seven today, people are always listening and he can’t let them know that he still thinks Steve is real, because saying it to himself is only a small slip-up, but saying it out loud where everybody can hear? Very bad slip-up. The kind of slip-up that ends with new or more (or new AND more) meds for him, and maybe a visit to the psych ward.

“I’m not a psycho,” he murmurs to himself and pulls on a strand of hair. “Not a psycho, no.”

“I know you’re not, Bucky,” someone says and James throws his head back and thinks for a second it’s Steve, but it’s only his mother (who is blond-like-Steve) and he swallows hard around the “One” that wants to jump out of his mouth, because now it’s only two times that someone is allowed to call him Bucky today, and then he can get angry.

“I don’t want to get angry,” he tells his mom very sincerely.

His mom smiles sadly and her hair seems to compliment the grey of her eyes more and more. James doesn’t know what he will do when his mother’s hair stops being blond-like-Steve. He will still have his father’s eyes, which are blue-like-Steve, so that’s okay, he guesses. But he will miss the hair, when it’s gone.

“You should get your hair dyed, mom,” he says and before she can look hurt, he adds, “I like how you’re blond. It looks pretty.”

(It looks prettier on Steve, just like his father’s eyes, but he doesn’t tell his mom that because Steve doesn’t exist.)

His mother, who seems to have no clue how to talk to her son anymore, just nods and smiles again.

“I am going out today, “James says because he needs to announce these things now. He’s allowed to go off by his own (he will never understand why his family won’t let him be alone in the house, but alone outside, where he could do so much more damage) but he needs to tell someone that he is going, and, preferably, where he is going.

“I don’t know yet where I wanna go,” he follows, because he sees the question on his mother’s face.

He knows where he wants to go, to be honest. He just doesn’t feel like telling his mother.

Today is a seven on the realness scale, and days like these are for too-sweet café lattes and comic book stores (he likes his coffee black without sugar, but he knows that Steve likes his with lots of milk and sugar, so he drinks the sweetest café lattes he can find on the menus of the various coffee shops he frequents).

Good days like this one are a warning. They don’t used to be. Once upon a time, James believed that having many good days in a row meant that he was getting better, that he maybe would even be good one day, not only better or okay, but _good_. That some day, there would be only good days, and no bad days anymore. Or that even if there were bad days, they wouldn’t be so bad.

Now he knows that having many good days in a row are a warning that the next bad day would come, and soon.

So when he knows that he will have a bad day soon, he goes out to buy comic books, because he likes to hide away on rooftops on bad days – if he manages to get out at all. He likes rooftops because he has exceptionally good eyesight, and he likes watching Brooklyn from high up, being able to see so much, but not being seen in return.

(He has what he calls not-memories: like the things he knows about Steve, he also knows other things, but he doesn’t know how he knows them. They feel like memories, but he is pretty sure there is no way that he ever made these memories. One of these not-memories is of someone who not only likes rooftops, but likes to perch on high vantage-points in general. Who has even better eyes than James does. He remembers a bow, but not a name.)

The day goes on almost without a hitch. He avoids the shops where people know him, because as soon as he gets outside, he doesn’t want to get angry anymore. By the time he gets home, he has several new comic books and a sugar high, and no ‘Bucky’ left. His sister calls him Bucky not five minutes later, and he smashes a cup, but manages not to scream. He spends the rest of the evening in his room and tries to tire himself out with every training exercise he can think of so sleep will come soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all the kudos, and for reading it in general!  
> (btw, I know Thor's hammer ist called 'Mjolnir', I just very much dig Darcy's total disregard for learning the actual name^^)

Chapter 2: Steve

 

“Still nothing?” Steve directs the question more to the sound of someone opening the door to his flat than to the actual person opening it. He wonders who it will be today.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Natasha says.

Steve doesn’t bother to look away from the wall of pictures he’s staring at. It’s full of pictures of him and Bucky, from their childhood until today. Their bodies and hairstyles and clothes have changed so many times, but the longer he stares at the pictures, he realizes that one thing always stayed the same: in every picture they look at each other like the other hung the moon.

“It’s not your fault,” he says.

“They’re trying everything. Coulson is currently calling Jane and Thor, and maybe they can help. But Bucky seems to be-“

“Don’t you dare say it,” Steve interrupts. His voice shakes and nearly breaks.

“Clint is staying at the bridge, in case anything changes.”

Steve nods and vows to never let Bucky set a foot on a bridge again. As soon as he gets him back, they will move somewhere extremely flat without any bridges at all. Bridges have the tendency to take Bucky away from him, and Steve knows that he will spend the rest of his probably enhanced timespan hating bridges.

“Do you want to go over it again?”

“We were driving, we wanted to get out of D.C. and back to Brooklyn. Bucky doesn’t like Fury, and he doesn’t like the flat here, so we wanted to spend the night at home... our real home, and not here. Bucky’s bike started to slip when we were on the bridge, and…”

Steve tries deep breaths. Seconds before he saw the bike slip, he’d thought about the weirdness of life, that he was driving over the same bridge where Bucky had attacked him not four years ago. He’d thought about everything that had changed since then.

“He tried to stay on the bike so he could stop it from hurting anyone else. He’s… it’s important for him, now, you know? Not hurting people, even when he risks his own life for it. I don’t know what he thought, or what he wanted to do, but he crashed through the railing and then he… he…”

Steve takes a shuddery breath.

“I didn’t hear him crash on the street. I didn’t hear him doing anything at all anymore. I couldn’t find him when I looked for him. It was like he…”

He tried to say it, these last few days. He tried to say the actual words, but he can’t bring himself to it.

Natasha comes closer, touches his arm.

“We’re doing everything we can. We will get him back for you.”

“I need him, Natasha,” Steve whispers, as if that was actually a secret and not a fact. “I need to get him back. I haven’t told him yet. I need to tell him.”

“We will get him back, and then you can tell him everything you want for the rest of your stupidly long supersoldier lives,” she says, and it’s a sign of her friendship that Steve can actually see her doubt, even though she doesn’t sound doubtful.

He sighs and takes her hand.

“Thanks,” he says and stands up. “I think I’m gonna head to bed now, I’m tired.”

Natasha nods and then leaves him. Steve knows that she knows that he’s lying. He’s not tired at all, but at least when he’s sleeping, he can dream of Bucky.

\---  
  
Phil Coulson ends the phone call and stares into the faces of several people: Natasha, trying to look unaffected, but betraying her nervousness by dropping the knife she’s playing with; Clint, fiddling with his hearing aids; Stark and Banner, who are talking in low voices, in a language that sounds like English but doesn’t contain any understandable English words. They all wait for him to tell them what to do, and Coulson, for all that he created the Avengers Initiative, is not used to seeing them so pliable.

“Thor and Dr Foster will arrive as soon as they can. Mr Stark, Dr Banner, I suggest you prepare a briefing for Dr Foster. Hawkeye, I need you back on location. Miss Romanoff… if you would be so kind to help with the interrogations? Try to look a little bit less like you want to kill someone, civilians tend to take that personally. That’s all.”

Everyone shuffles away, and Coulson finds himself alone in the room. He thinks about calling Fury, but remembers that the ex-leader of S.H.I.E.L.D. only likes to come in to antagonize the people Coulson has to work with. The rest of the time he’s on missions so secret that they should probably think about creating a new clearance level. F for _Fuck You, Fury_ , maybe.

\---  
  
“I still don’t understand what I’m doing here,” Jane says.

“Well, between me, you, and Bruce here, we’ve got the biggest brains S.H.I.E.L.D. has to offer to complement its brawns. Although, don’t tell Natasha I left her out, she’s gonna have my ass for that,” Tony winces with the mere thought of it.

“Okay, let me rephrase that: what am I supposed to do here? Captain America’s friend vanishes and you think I know something about it?”

“Heeeey, do you think Cap could pick up Mjormjor?” Darcy asks from where she’s standing in the lab, and by the look on Bruce’s face, she’s not actually supposed to pick up what she is holding in her hands.

“What Tony means, Dr Foster,” Bruce says, “is that you and your… boyfriend… are the only real sources we have when it comes to parallel universes and the like.”

“Is that what you Midgardians call me? ‘Boyfriend’?” Thor asks and smiles delightedly.

Jane looks like she’s ready to run away, and Darcy seems to have mercy on her, dragging Thor away and looking like it totally makes her day to explain to an alien how humans categorize their relationships. Coulson watches them go and makes a mental note to talk with Darcy about recruitment. S.H.I.E.L.D. could really use people that are not star-struck by superheroes.

“Are you saying he is on one of the other worlds?”

“We don’t know. But we have clearly exhausted any possibility that would mean he’s still on Earth, so a parallel universe is our best guess. Or our worst, depending on how you see it.” Tony looks a bit like he wants a pat on the head for thinking about other people’s feelings, and Bruce wonders how Pepper manages to be with him on a regular basis.

“I will need to scan the location where he was last seen, maybe I will pick up anything. But please remember that such a thing is highly unlikely, and what happened in London was only because of the Convergence. At least I think it was only because of that.”

Tony and Bruce both look like they expected more, and Jane feels sorry for them; she would love to give them more exact answers, but she doubts that she can. She is learning more about the different worlds and Asgard in particular every day, but to translate that into human scientific terms is complicated, especially because there is not really another person to help her; Erik is still having his problems and Darcy – as much as she loves her – is a political science major and not really helpful when it comes to natural sciences.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg, thank you guys so, SO MUCH! I am a bit stunned by all the positive responses I got from all of you - you have no idea how much that means to me.  
> thank you Shineycompanion, wraithkeeper, and cabloom, for taking the time to leave a comment;  
> thank you cabloom (again), omet, Shineycompanion (again), kaybythesea, wraithkeeper (again), NightOfTheLand, Jobell032, Radishking, Ridney, SkyBluePinkWithPurpleDots, and MeghanInBlack, for leaving kudos;  
> thank you to those of you who subscribed, and those of you who read the story.  
> You are all made of awesomesauce, and I hope you enjoy the new chapter as well!

Chapter 3: Bucky

 

When he wakes up in his dream, he immediately knows that he’s dreaming. As always, he vows to himself to remember every little detail of the dream, even though he knows that he will forget most of it as soon as he wakes up. He will only remember fragments, but that’s okay, too.

Here are some things he remembers from former fragments:

1)      He remembers that the first time Steve kissed him, he thought it was the best feeling ever.

2)      He also remembers that he thought the exact same thing after every kiss and touch that followed.

3)      He remembers talking to Steve, but he can never remember what they talked about.

4)      He remembers that it is better this way, because the only two times that he did ended with him trying to kill himself; only he does not remember why.

5)      He remembers that Steve is sometimes very small and a bit sickly, and sometimes he is taller than him and has muscles that make bodybuilders cry. He knows that while he likes bigger Steve a bit more because he doesn’t have to worry about his health, smaller Steve is somehow more important to their history.

Bucky – in his dreams, he is always Bucky and never James – is curious what he will remember from this dream, but for the time being, it doesn’t matter all that much. What he is really looking forward to is meeting Steve.

“Bucky?”

“Speak of the devil,” Bucky grins and steps easily in Steve’s hug. In this dream, Steve is tall and healthy, and the space between his arms feels like the safest place on Earth.

“I missed you, Buck,” Steve murmurs in his hair, and Bucky smiles.

“I missed you too, Steve.”

They hug a long time, and even after that, Bucky is unwilling to let go of him. He knows that he will feel Steve’s arms around him like a phantom ache when he wakes up, worse than his lost limb ever could ache. Speaking of that-

“You brought my new arm!” Bucky exclaims and touches his left arm with his right. The arm that Steve brings in his dreams always looks the same: metal, sleek, with a red star on the shoulder. The arm is always something he tries to remember from the dream, but when he wakes up, he will only remember that he had a new arm, but never what it looks like.

“I didn’t bring it to you, Bucky. We talked about that. Hydra gave it to you when they captured you.”

Steve doesn’t sound as warm as before anymore, and he doesn’t look as happy.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Bucky says. “Hydra is from Greek mythology, right? Cut off one head and it gets two more or something?”

Steve looks actually pained now.

“Hydra is evil. They hurt you, Bucky. They made you forget me, and you tried to kill me. We talked about this. Your dream ain’t real, and your reality ain’t, either. You need to get out of there, Bucky.”

Bucky takes a step back. He doesn’t like his dream anymore, he doesn’t like when his dreams turn out that way. He’d hoped it would be one of the others, dreams where they cuddle and talk, or sometimes even have sex.

“My doctor says you’re the one that ain’t real,” Bucky says, now worried.

“She’s lying to you, Buck. They all are. You need to get out of there. You need to wake up, for real this time. They are hurting you, Bucky. They want to hurt you so you’ll stop remembering me and start hurting me again. Don’t let them do that. Don’t let them make you forget me. Please remember me.”

As much as Bucky doesn’t like this dream, seeing Steve so torn up breaks his heart. He steps closer again, taking Steve’s hands.

“Don’t… don’t talk about that, okay?” Bucky pleads and is glad to see Steve nodding.

He leans up on his toes and kisses Steve lips, and it’s weird for a moment because he not-remembers how it felt when he had to lean down to kiss the same lips.

There are so many things that don’t add up when he dreams of Steve, but dreams aren’t supposed to make sense, just like science is still true even if people don’t believe in it, so Bucky figures it’s alright. Steve melts into the kiss and for a second, lifetimes and lifetimes of kisses and vows and stories flash upon his mind,

_The thing is, you don’t have to – You take all the stupid with you - I’m with you ‘til the end of the line – The skinny little guy from Brooklyn, that’s who I’m following – I love you, you pigheaded mook – C’mere Captain America, give us a kiss –_

and he’s so, so glad that dreams don’t have to make sense because there are way too many memories for just one life.

“Tell me about us, will ya, Steve?” he asks, and suddenly they’re lying on a couch (the couch, Bucky knows, stands in their flat in Brooklyn, and they often lie there and cuddle, sometimes watching movies, sometimes listening to music. Sometimes it’s completely silent and they just listen to each other’s breaths.)

Steve cradles him in his arms, and starts talking about a day on Coney Island, when Bucky made him ride the Cyclone, and the cadence of his voice lulls Bucky into sleep. Before he drifts off, he opens his eyes shortly, looking at Steve.  
_I will remember you_ , he thinks.

When he wakes up, the only thing that he remembers is that he remembers Steve.

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes. I am twenty-nine years old. I am in Brooklyn. Steve Rogers…,” he hesitates for a second, doesn’t want to say it but does so anyway, “…doesn’t exist.”

Today isn’t a good day.

The cleaning lady surprises him by walking up behind him too quietly, and he nearly smashes her face for it. He has to go to therapy today, so that means his mother will drive him, which in turn means they are going to be stuck in a car for way too long; because even if they wouldn’t get caught in a traffic jam (they do) any amount of time in a confined space with someone next to him who forgot how to talk to him is too long.

Doctor Simmons seems to sense his distress and is even nicer and calmer than normally. They take their usual places – Simmons in one armchair, and Bucky on the floor with his back to the other one, and silence settles between them for a while, before Simmons begins to speak. It’s always been like this, and even though James knows he is supposed to talk first to show he’s getting better, he never does. With all these people around him, pushing him to _get better, be okay again, be good_ – not beginning to speak is the one denial he grants himself every time.

“There are several things I want to talk about with you today, James,” she begins, and James nods.

“I want to talk about dreams first. Do you ever remember your dreams?”

James opens his mouth to answer and -

_They ain’t real, Buck. They’re trying to hurt you. Please remember me. Remember me._

“No,” he says, staring Simmons right in the face. Looking away means lying. Looking away means he has something to hide.

“Never? Surely you must remember something, James. We all remember our dreams from time to time, it’s normal.”

“No,” he says again. Sensing that his answer won’t satisfy her, he adds, “must be something with the meds, I s’ppose. They make me sleep like the dead.”

He hasn’t taken the sleeping pills for quite some time now, as soon as he figured out they really stopped him from having Steve-dreams.

Simmons doesn’t seem to know what to do with this answer, but she notes down something on her legal pad anyway. Maybe she will figure out new ways to medicate him. Somehow, James can’t bring himself to care, not today, anyway. Today, reality is a meager four, and on days like these, he doesn’t care about reality much.

“Okay then,” Simmons says and her voice sounds too chipper for someone who just went nowhere fast. “Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”

She rummages around in one of the drawers of the coffee table that’s in between the two of them, and re-emerges with a stack of square cards.

“Is this gonna be some kind of Rorschach test?” he asks. “You know, in one of the comics I’m reading, there’s this guy called Rorschach, he has a mask that has changing ink spots on it. Real ugly mug, that one.”

Simmons smiles again, but doesn’t respond to what he just said. Instead, she shows him the first card.

“It’s not really a Rorschach test, no,” she says instead, “but I want you to look at the pictures and tell me what they remind you of. You still got issues with remembering some of the things that happened to you, and I want to try and see if this helps you, okay?”

The first card has a bridge on it.

“I jumped off’a one of these. Twice,” James says, just to see Simmons wince.

They go through several – one of them, memorably, has a picture of some sort of octopus on it – before Simmons shows him one that makes everything in James go cold.

It’s several rings, with a star in the middle. _Steve’s shield_ , he thinks immediately, and curses himself for being so unaware of the trap he’s walked straight into.

“Looks like some sort of target. Only I don’t get why the bull’s eye is a star, but different strokes for different folks, am I right?” he manages, with only a short pause.

Strangely, Simmons seems to ignore his hesitation in favour of looking actually pleased with his answer.

“I think that’s enough for today, James,” she says and with that ends the session way before their normal time.

His mother won’t be back yet from where she normally goes into hiding when he’s with Doctor Simmons, so he takes off on foot, remembering to send her a text that he’s finished early and wants to spend a few hours outside before he gets home.

He turns his phone off after that, aware that his family gives him a wide berth on the days of his therapy. They almost expect erratic behavior on these days, and James is only too happy to comply. He rethinks that statement for a second, doesn’t like the sound of ‘happy to comply’.

Then his mind is occupied with other things, mainly not falling off the fire escape he’s currently climbing. He watches the sun set over the Hudson on the roof of an abandoned building before he heads home.

Some people call after him on his way, call him a cripple as soon as they see his left sleeve is empty. He ignores them. Picking fights was always Steve’s thing, after all.

* * *

I am so sorry to let Bucky suffer, but I promise, everything will be okay in the end!

If you want to scream at me, here's [my tumblr.](http://thefreakfox.tumblr.com/)

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you cabloom (you totally saved my ass) and Shineycompanion once again for leaving comments - you people are great! <3  
> Also thank you to everyone who left a kudo, unfortunately I have completely lost track oh who y'all are, but: THANK YOU, ily :)
> 
> as always, endless thanks to buttheyrebrothers, who helped me figure out some things about the story that I hadn't thought of yet.
> 
> The story is now officially completed, so I'm gonna put all the other chapters online over the course of this evening :)

Chapter 4: Steve

When Natasha comes to get him in the morning, Steve is already set and ready to go. Even though he went to sleep early the day before, he looks like he barely slept minutes. Natasha thinks that he probably spent the night mourning his vanished best friend and lover, but she’s too nice to say anything. She used to dislike that Steve made her want to be good, but by now she’s grown used to it.

When they arrive at S.H.I.E.L.D., the news are on, and Steve nearly falls over when he sees Bucky on pretty much every screen on the room. He remembers this, it was –

_It’s Bucky’s first press conference as a part of the Avengers Initiative, and the most nervous person in the room is, predictably, Steve. “If they ask one stupid question, we’re gone,” he says for the third time to the poor woman who organized the whole thing._  
_“Just lemme choose which one is the stupid one, yeah?” Bucky says and laughs easily. His hair is still long and he wears a black tank top that shows off his metal arm. He polished it the night before, and whenever someone says Bucky seems to be so different from the Sergeant Barnes everyone knows from the history books, Steve wants to explain to them all the ways In which Bucky is still the same. The pride in his appearance, for one, is definitely very much Bucky. He always liked to look nice, and Steve loves him, no matter in which decade._  
 _The conference isn’t actually that bad, until one man stands up and asks, “How do we now that the Winter Soldier isn’t trying to kill Captain America again? How do we know that we can trust him?”_  
 _Steve leans forward, but before he can say anything, Bucky silences him with an easy gesture of his hand._  
 _“One, the Winter Soldier sits right here. The Winter Soldier would also like it very much if you’d call him Bucky Barnes,” that gets him laughter throughout the rows of journalists, “two, I’d give my left arm for Steve. And if you hadn’t noticed, that arm is full of nice tech and I need it because the Nazis kinda stole my flesh one. But y’know what, lemme just…”_  
 _Steve looks to him, confused. Two seconds later, he realizes what Bucky is about to do._  
 _“Bucky,” he says warningly, but Bucky is too occupied with his task._  
 _Almost gleefully, he detaches his metal arm and holds it under Steve’s nose, like it’s a bouquet of flowers._  
 _“Dear Captain America, will you accept my metal arm as a token of my appreciation?” he says and Steve blushes a deep red. And just when he thinks it can’t get any worse (he’s holding Bucky’s arm a bit awkwardly, because it feels weird when Bucky is not attached to it), Bucky leans again towards the microphones._  
 _“Oh, and three: the Winter Soldier also loves Captain America. Like, whaddaya youngsters call it? Buttsex? Yes, Bucky Barnes loves Steve Rogers in the buttsex way, we’re totally fondue-ing, as Steve would say. You can write that down as an answer. Satisfied?”_

\- yes, it was the press conference when Bucky outed them to the world. Accidentally, he would always say. Totally on purpose, Steve knows, but he never actually cared for it. He just wishes he hadn’t looked as stupid as he did (he waved Bucky’s arm a little, when all hell broke loose. Bucky still mocks him for that).

Natasha looks at him like she’s expecting him to cry or break down, and even though Steve feels like it, he won’t do it until he’s got Bucky back again. And then, it hopefully won’t be necessary. Instead of bawling his eyes out, he glares at a tech until she switches from the news (the anchorwoman is talking about the ‘tragic loss’ and that the country mourns for Captain America’s best friend, and that is just so, so wrong, because Bucky isn’t dead, he can’t be dead) to the operation screen. There’s not much on there, only the meagre facts they have collected until now. There’s one detail, though, that’s new to Steve.  
  
“’No parallel universe’?” he reads.  
“Yes, that would be correct,” Banner says and suddenly appears from somewhere. He takes his glasses off and cleans them on a shirt that looks slept-in. “Dr Foster could not find any traces of a… hole to another world or universe. Or galaxy, for that matter. She is currently discussing with Thor about Asgardian methods to find out if she’s right. Maybe they’re also taking a nap, she looked pretty tired when she left two hours ago…”  
Banner looks tired, too. And so does pretty much everyone in the room. Steve suddenly feels like a horrible person – when he was hiding away in his bedroom, his friends had done so much, and he didn’t even thank them.  
He opens his mouth to say as much, but the Stark kid just shakes his head.  
“Don’t, capsicle. What’re friends for, right?”

Steve tries a smile and finds it to be actually working a bit. He sometimes forgets that he is part of a team again. The Avengers are just as much of a ragtag group as the Commandoes were, but sometimes he just… forgets. Thankfully, no one seems to take it personally, even though Bucky’s cuffed him over the head more than one time, telling him to stop living in the past and mourning people that aren’t there any longer. It’s remarkable how at ease Bucky seems with everything that happened. Or maybe it’s everything that happened that helps him to sound so wise. Maybe it’s both. Steve just knows that he is so, so proud of Bucky – and that he will do everything to get him back.

So he squares his shoulders and actually steps to the operation board, looking at the intel instead of just staring at it mindlessly.  
“Okay, where are we? Is there anything else that we have? What about the feeds of the traffic cameras in the area, is there anything suspicious? And what did the witnesses say? Anything there?”  
The people around him straighten their backs and on most faces, the relief is obvious. They need Captain America to be a hero, not a wreck, Steve realizes. Even when he’s feeling like shit, these people need him to be a symbol; he feels stupid not to have seen it earlier. There’s no war, and Steve didn’t think that people would need him as a symbol when there’s no war. Apparently, he’s been wrong.

Various people start to fill him in, and Natasha hands him the stack of witness statements she’s gathered. As he’s going through it, there is one thing that repeats itself over and over again.  
“He didn’t fall. None of them saw him fall,” he says, to no one in particular. Luckily, Stark is right beside him to hear it.  
“That’s… good, right? Barnes doesn’t like falling from bridges, or so I’ve heard,” he says and dodges the stapler Natasha throws at him.  
“It also means that he didn’t fall,” Steve says, and when nobody understands, he repeats, “He did not fall. But the railings were totally crushed. So…”  
“… so where did he go?” Clint says and frowns. Steve has no idea how he got inside without him noticing, but he stopped caring about that a long time ago. You find Hawkeye perched on your fridge at 5 a.m. in the morning, drunk of his ass and rambling about Natasha, you stop caring about how he comes and goes (the same goes for Natasha, who had come into his flat three hours earlier, equally drunk and trying to fill out an English crossword in Russian, all the while complaining that the clues were wrong).

“JARVIS, give me the data of the bridge again,” Tony says. Coulson is effectively silenced from pointing out that he’s in the Triskelion, not Stark Tower, when Jarvis’ cool voice comes online.  
“Sir, which part of the data would you like to have?”  
Tony grins, shrugs, and completely refuses to explain how Jarvis got into S.H.I.E.L.D.’s systems.  
“I need everything you have on the conditions of the street. Any spillages? And the conditions, how possible was it for the Wi—for Barnes to have slipped?”  
Sets of data appear on the screen; traffic news, the air and ground temperature, and something that looks like statistical calculations about the causes of motorbike accidents.  
“Sir, there were no spillages reported in the 24 hours prior to the accident. There is also a very slight possibility for Sergeant Barnes to have slipped, considering his motorbike was in prime condition, also the weather conditions and the condition of the street Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes were driving on were both good,” Jarvis says.

Steve frowns. He thought that whatever happened would make more sense when he would start working on it, but everything just gets more confusing by the minute.  
“I don’t understand,” he says.  
“Well, that makes at least six of us. Or nine, depends on how invested everyone is,” the Stark kid chimes in. He also looks like he’s about to ask every single tech person in the room about their opinion, but he’s luckily silenced by Natasha, who holds up another stapler.  
Most days, Steve is thankful for Stark’s attitude; his father was annoyingly the same, but some situations get easier when there’s someone who jokes about it. Today, though, Steve has the urge to throw his shield at him. Or gag him and call Pepper to beg her to take him away.  
He takes a deep breath.  
“Okay, everyone, let’s take a break, yeah? We probably won’t get much more until Dr Foster and Thor come back.”  
The techs shuffle out of the room and soon, the Avengers are the only people left in the room; even Coulson has gone. Silence settles for a few minutes.  
“I know I’m asking probably too much,” Steve then says, “I know I shouldn’t use everyone like that. But I need to find him again. I—“  
“Bullshit!” Stark says and shuts him up. “You’re our friend, Cap. And Barnes is- well, give him a few decades or so and he will see how great I actually am.”  
“He threatened to detach his arm and beat you death with it the last time you two talked,” Natasha says and everyone laughs.  
For a second, everything feels normal, but too soon the laughter dies down again.  
“We’re gonna get him back, Cap. He’s important for you, so he’s important for us. Even if it may take some time until we’ve all warmed up. We’ll find out where he is, and then we’re gonna get him back for you. Whatever it takes, and if we have to burn down every Hydra base left on this earth or travel to some weird other world… it would be my genuine pleasure.”  
Steve nearly grins again as Clint ends his little speech with his by now almost popular sentence.  
“Enough of this feelings stuff, I already feel nauseous. Let’s get to work, everyone grab a computer, we’re gonna analyze everything we have until we see it in our dreams,” Stark is already on the way to the largest one, giving Jarvis orders in a speed that only the AI can properly follow.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Bucky 

James feels awful. When he woke up, he stumbled over the words of his mantra, and his arm – his left arm – won’t stop itching. Muscles that are no longer there contract and his no longer there fist clenches. He swears he can hear little gears whirring and screeching. If he looks at his stump from the corner of his eye, he can almost see metal glinting, and the corner of a red star.  
Today, he doesn’t even try to get up. His head hurts, and his stomach revolts. It’s been a long time since he had felt so truly miserable, but he still remembers that there is basically nothing he can do. He’s tried before, to do something against the feeling that reality is exactly one step behind and catch up, but he’s never succeeded. One moment he will feel like he needs to get outside, and as soon as he’s outside, everything will be overwhelming and he’ll wish to hide away inside of his room.  
The air catches in his lungs and he tries to even out his breathing. He can feel the panic attack welling up, and he barely manages to not freak out. He knows that the next time, he won’t be as lucky.

His mother knocks on his door, and he throws a book at it as an answer. Luckily, his mother understands and leaves again. Maybe later, the flat will be empty; then he could sneak out to the roof. His parents had his part of the flat remodeled after he’d lost his arm (that’s what they call it: the day he lost his arm. They don’t talk about the psychotic breakdown or the suicide attempts. For all that James know, his parents probably told the neighbors James was neglectful and accidentally forgot his flesh arm on the subway) so he has an en suite bathroom. Pissing in bottles for three days seems to have actually paid out.

James knows that it’s stupid, but he wishes for Steve. Steve would know what to do; he would know how to stop his thoughts running wild in his head, like rats trying to catch their tails. He can barely form a coherent thought, everything is flitting in- and outside of his consciousness. It’s like sitting in a really fast train, being unable to properly focus on the landscape passing by, because as soon as he tries to, that part is gone.  
He hides under his blanket and closes his eyes. But the air under the blanket turns hot too soon, his breath catches again and the panic attack hits him with full impact.

When he comes to again, he lies under his bed, his back pressed into the wall. He clutches a knife in his right hand, and when he tries to let go, he realizes that his hand is cramped so badly that he can’t put the knife down. It would be easy with another hand, he thinks, just massage the cramp away and everything’s fine again. But he’s only got one hand left, and as long as that hand is cramping and holding a knife, it will be nearly impossible to wiggle out from under the bed. He doesn’t comprehend how he got here, but his left shoulder feels scraped up, and he thinks he remembers actually lifting the bed to be able to roll under the middle part that is nearly touching the ground.

He curses silently; he can only hope nobody will come to check in on him before he gets out from under the bed – if they do, he will be in the biggest trouble since his last suicide attempt. They will not tell him he’s in trouble, though. His sister will try to hide her tears, his mother will openly cry, and his father will look at him with a mixture of disgust and despair. James hates every reaction. He feels like he’s failed. Maybe he should have told Dr Simmons about it, but he doesn’t trust her. What if she is collaborating with his family? What if they all want to get rid of him somehow?  
A thought – a sentence – that doesn’t belong to him flits through his head:  
_They want you to forget me. They want to use you to kill me._  
The worst thing about it? James remembers that Steve said it to him. Following what he knows, that means he will try to take his own life again, and soon.  
“I don’t want to die,” he says, “I don’t want to kill myself,” but he can hear the lack of conviction in his own voice clearly.

James knows that he hasn’t got much time left. Days, maybe, if he’s lucky. Hours, if he’s unlucky. He needs to start preparing for it, and he looks at the knife in his right hand. It won’t be as easy as it would be if he had two arms, he surmises, but he will manage. There are other parts in his body that will bleed just as well as his wrists would. He shortly thinks of jumping again, but that hadn’t worked the last two times – and he can’t wager on the third time actually being the charm; he doubts that he will be left alone when his third attempt fails. A nice padded room and heavy medication is more likely, and that’s the last thing he wants.

Half an hour later, he can loosen his grip on the knife, and another fifteen minutes later, he drags himself out from under his bed. His whole body hurts, and he just wants to crawl back in his bed, but instead he moves to the door. He listens closely for a few minutes, then he opens it a few inches. The flat is silent.  
“Hello? Anybody here?” he asks into the silence. Nobody answers, and Bucky knows that this is his chance. He dresses quickly in a black tank top and black jeans and takes a few comic books, water and some chocolate bars. Like an afterthought, he also grabs the knife. Then he climbs onto the roof.

When he got back from the hospital two years ago, he’d started to hide away there; and over time, he’s accumulated a variety of blankets, pillows, and other stuff up there, all stored away in a throw tent he placed in an almost dry corner of the roof. He doesn’t know if anybody knows about his hiding place, but when he comes up here, he doesn’t care about these things.  
When he feels like being James is not what he’s actually supposed to be, he doesn’t really care about the janitor complaining about people illegally accessing the roof.

It’s sunny outside, something James only realizes now. It feels like the first day of summer, so he drags the blankets outside and lets the sun shine on his face. It feels good to warm up a little bit, even if it does nothing to cease the noise in his head, and James almost hopes to fall asleep again and dream of Steve. Steve would love to be up here, he thinks, even though he’d probably ask the janitor or the manager of the building first if they were actually allowed to go on the roof. Normally, James would question how he knows this, debate over not-memories, but today – today he just doesn’t give a shit, excuse his French.

His mind gives him a few moments of rest and peace, even if not quiet, but then the thoughts start in again. He’s probably going to kill himself, _again_ , in the near future. He wonders if he should fight that thought process. Maybe he should call Doc Simmons, but then he would have to explain why he knows he’s going to kill himself, and no matter what he will say, it won’t end up good for him. He snorts. It doesn’t look like anything will end up good for him anymore, so really, it shouldn’t matter to him how bad it’s gonna get.

It would be hard to explain to anybody, he thinks, the need he gets to kill himself when he remembers what Steve said to him in his dreams. It’s a need, yes, but it’s also like a logical consequence, somehow. He can’t keep on living when he remembers what Steve said. James just haven’t found the reason why, even though he feels like he’s getting closer to it.

Steve wants him to wake up. But when James is not dreaming about Steve, he’s already awake. He can’t get more awake than not sleeping, but he needs to do something, something that is a bit drastic but – but the last two times, when he awoke from driving and jumping off bridges, he actually had felt more awake. It hadn’t been exactly the moment when he woke up, but rather the few moments of half-consciousness before it. He had seen people then, doctors, that weren’t the same ones that were surrounding him when he really woke up.

James sighs. It’s complicated to even think about it, so talking about it is out of question. Instead he takes up the knife again and tries to let it dance between his fingers. He distinctly not-remembers being really good with a knife some time ago. Now, the knife clatters to the floor, and James swears. He can’t do anything right. He can’t even kill himself right, for heaven’s sake.

“You will get better if you keep on trying, you know,” a voice suddenly says and James is very, very close to throwing the knife at the voice. He doubts that he would do harm, but it would always be a nice distraction.

“I don’t know you,” is the first thing James says, and then, after some consideration, “who the fuck are you?”

The person – male, older than James, and small – comes a few short steps closer and rights his glasses.

“My name is Arnim Zola. I am pleased to meet you.”

* * *

 

I'm sorry please don't shoot me.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to formally apologize, this chapter is a total monster lengthwise. It ran away a bit from me, I guess, but I think it was worth it ^^

Chapter 6: Steve

Just when Steve thinks his eyes are going to fall out of his head and onto the tablet he’s working on, Jane and Thor basically storm the room. Well, that is, Thor is doing all the storming, his feet making unnatural loud noises on the carpet, and Dr Foster is at least moving fast.

“Friends! We have news!” booms Thor, and that makes even Coulson shut up, who is currently still berating the Stark kid about compromising safety by bringing in foreign tech, and they really don’t need another security breach, thank you.

“Did you find him?” Steve asks, feeling his heart speed up dangerously fast. He’s on his feet now, even though he doesn’t remember standing up.

“Well, no,” Dr Foster says, and because she sees the disappointment in Steve’s face, goes on, “but we did find something. I remembered Thor telling me that Heimdall used to watch me from the Bifrost, and I thought, when he could find _me_ , why not Sergeant Barnes, right?” Her face is a bit red, and she looks really excited, so Steve tamps down the urge to tell her to cut the crap and get on with it.

“It turns out, he couldn’t see Barnes, I’m not sure why but I’m thinking, a cloaking device maybe? But he did see a symbol, some sort of octopus—“ Several people start to swear.

“Hydra,” Steve says, his voice completely toneless. “Hydra took him?”

He feels his insides go completely cold, and can barely hear Dr Foster talking about misrepresentation, since the Hydra had multiple heads, not arms, and Natasha talking about how it still fits, because Hydra has many arms, but only one brain, and suddenly, Banner gingerly places him on a chair and tells him to breath.

After a few minutes, Steve looks up again. He zeroes in on Hawkeye.

“Clint, we’re gonna blow up Hydra bases,” he says. No one tells him otherwise.

***

The only problem, Steve realizes pretty soon after his cry to arms, is that they don’t know where Bucky is. They know now who took him, and that’s a start, but other than that, they don’t know much more.

The Stark kid – Tony, he reminds himself, the least he can do is be nice to Stark’s kid and actually use his name – has Dr Foster and Thor repeat for the n-th time what exactly Heimdall said, as if the exact wording would somehow help.

Natasha stares at a still of the security camera that, even if it did not record the accident in itself, at least shows the back wheels of the bikes they were riding when it happened. Bucky’s back wheel is skewed, so it’s probably a few moments before the bike crashed on the street.

Clint has left the room, presumably to grab as many arrows as he can find, and Bruce is also staring at the still.

“It’s weird, isn’t it,” he says and Natasha nods. “It’s not right somehow.”

“See the angle?” Natasha asks and points to something on the screen. Steve squints, but even with enhanced eyesight, he doesn’t know what to look for.

“Yeah,” Banner says and Steve wishes that the two would hold the conversation outside of their heads.

“I know where to look!” Tony says in the same moment that Banner and Natasha say, “He didn’t slip, he was pulled!”

“What?” says Steve, and all three of them open their mouths. “One after the other. Stark, you start. We can talk about the other stuff while we get there.” Making such a decision feels weird, but also strangely normal. Steve never understood why people chose to follow him. Bucky always said that it was exactly that.

“I know where to look,” Tony repeats, and he even manages to look not _too_ smug. “I mean, not _exactly_ , but… Heimdall couldn’t see Barnes, and he couldn’t see the immediate surroundings, but when he withdrew the zoom a bit, so to speak, he was able to see some landmarks. Jarvis is running them through databases, starting with the immediate vicinity, and then going outwards. He should be able to find something. So, I don’t think we’re good to go immediately, but it’ll be soon… in the meantime, let Red and Green over here solve the mystery of the disappeared soldier.”

Steve starts walking – not that he’s going anywhere (pun not intended), but he needs to move. They are so close suddenly, so close to finding Bucky, that he can’t _not_ move; it’s like his body is a spring that is coiling itself up for the moment when it has to go off.

Natasha throws the still on the big screen (she actually _throws_ it and Steve thinks she’s spending way more time with Tony’s tech than anyone is aware of, because she does it like a pro) and points at what she was discussing earlier with Banner.

And now, Steve sees it, too: the angle of the tire is not quite right. It’s nothing major, and it’s a miracle that Natasha and Bruce saw it, but the longer Steve looks at it, the more obvious it gets.

“It woulda look different if he’d slipped,” he says, and Natasha looks at him like a proud mother. “It actually looks like something’s first pushed at him and then pulled him away…”

“Jarvis, play us the feed of the cameras that show the space left from the bridge,” Tony says and then pulls at his hair, “I should have thought of that sooner,” he adds. “We only looked at the feed from the actual bridge, we didn’t know we needed to look beside it…”

Jarvis plays the feed, and Tony’s right; it’s not very clear, but with the knowledge that something is happening, everyone can see a part of Bucky’s bike (and, Steve thinks, also his left arm) vanish into thin air.

“They must have grabbed him with something, then pulled him into a plane that was hovering there. If they engineered the cloaking device to also work on the inside of the plane, not only the outside… I mean the one thing we know about Hydra is that they always have the better tech. It could have worked instantly on Barnes, too, maybe,” Tony says, and everyone can see the clear disgust on his face when he speaks about Hydra’s tech.

Of course Stark would take that personally, thinks Steve and almost grins.

“Okay, so we figured out part of the how, and I don’t really care about the why-“ Steve begins, but is being cut off by Natasha.

“Isn’t that obvious? Since that idiot announced your relationship to the whole world, people are trying to kill him to hurt you. What?” She raises an eyebrow at the offended looks she’s getting.

“Wasn’t it Barnes who told us to speak openly about these things, because not speaking about it doesn’t solve things, and subtlety is not everyone’s strong suit?” she adds.

“Well, yes, but-“ Steve concedes, and gets interrupted again.

“So we’ll talk about it, because you need to be prepared,” Natasha says, and suddenly, her face is soft, “I know you avoid talking about the possibility that he’s…”

“Bucky ain’t dead,” Steve says, and the finality in his voice suffocates any other of Natasha’s attempts to talk about it. But Steve, Steve remembers –

_“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, puts his coffee mug down and wants to leave the kitchen. But he can’t, because Bucky is standing in his way, and he’s angry, he’s angry because-_

_“But I want to talk about it. And you NEED to talk about it, whether you like it or not; so you better sit your ass down, Rogers, or I ain’t gonna be here when you come back.”_

_Steve doesn’t move an inch after that. Bucky looks equal parts satisfied to have stopped him, and sad that he needed to pull out the big guns to make it happen. Bucky remembers that from before; it’s not the first fight they are having, by God, he lost count in the war around the number 100, but this fight is somehow worse; because before it was strategy or Steve’s recklessness, and even before that it was about Steve trying to work even though he was sick, or about Bucky stealing food so Steve had something to eat; and somewhere between that it was about them, and their relationship, and finding out what the fuck they were doing. It had never been like this, though – Steve refusing point blank to open up, Steve refusing to listen to something that was actually important to Bucky._

_“You might not want to talk about it, but I want to. I need to, because if I don’t, I ain’t gonna be around for long before it eats me up completely. I need to talk about it because it means I care, and if I care, it might make me feel guilty, but it also means I feel_ something _, you understand?” Bucky says, and Steve seems to understand it now, at least a bit. He nods and squares his shoulders and then goes to make coffee, and Bucky knows it’s a good sign, because coffee always means talking._

_When they finally sit, Bucky can’t speak. Steve waits him out, patiently as ever, watches as one storm after the other passes behind Bucky’s eyes, until he can tamp down the chaos and formulate sentences._

_“The facts are, I was captured by crazy Nazi scientists, and they experimented with me. I’m thinking they tried to remake your serum, and they didn’t completely fail, but it also didn’t fully take for a while. They didn’t have Stark’s… whatsit called? Vita rays? They experimented on me and they tried to break me – now, come one, that one is old news, you had roughly seventy years to come to terms with that, so don’t look at me like I punched your puppy – but I didn’t break. Then I fell from the bridge, and I admit, that part is a bit hazy for me. They found me, and they took me. They sawed of my arm and put another one there, and then they brainwashed the fuck outta me. I was sold to the Red Room later on, as we all know now, and they brainwashed and wiped me again and again and again, until there was nothing left of me, until I wasn’t actually_ there _anymore, just the tiniest sliver of self curled up in a corner of my brain, until I almost forgot what your face looked like, and then I ACTUALLY FORGOT WHAT YOUR FACE LOOKED LIKE AND—“_

_The mug comes to pieces in Bucky’s left hand and coffee spills everywhere. Steve doesn’t move, except for grabbing Bucky’s hands, and there, with his arms getting wet because they’re lying in the middle of a puddle of coffee, Steve finally understands completely. This is why they need to talk about it; because while he managed to ignore everything that happened to Bucky because he loved him, couldn’t stop it if he tried – Bucky had that all happen to him. Bucky had to live through it, and now he has to live_ with _it, all the guilt and sorrow and Steve finally understands that Bucky needs to tell this story so he can move on._

_“You never really did, though, didja?” he asks quietly. “You didn’t forget what I looked like. You knew me. I know you did.”_

_“They might have tried to wipe it for, oh, I don’t know, several hundred times, but there’s no way I could forget your ugly mug forever,” Bucky jokes, but then he gets earnest again._

_“When I saw you the first time – when you ripped off my mask – I think the part of me that was somehow still there woke up again. I can’t remember everything from my years as an asset,” his face curls up in disgust with the name, ”but I was lucid sometimes. Not in the way that I could control what I – what he – was doing. But I saw it, as if he wanted to show me so I wouldn’t forget. And when you called my name, the part that remembered started to scream and pound on the walls of my brains. That’s why I slipped up later on, why I told them that I knew you. Because I was confused and I needed to tell someone, only I didn’t understand that those people weren’t the ones I shoulda told. I wasn’t there yet completely, but they realized what you had started, so they wiped me again. After that, I only remembered that I remembered something, but I didn’t remember what it was. Does that even make sense?”_

_Steve just holds Bucky’s hands tighter. He wants to stand up to curl around him, but he’s afraid to break the moment, so he sits still, coffee soaking through his longsleeve._

_“Anyway, the rest, as they say, is history. But, what I’m saying is, I need to talk about it, and I need you to listen, and I also need you to talk about it, too, okay? Not all the time, but sometimes. And when we talk about it, we need to do it openly, even if it hurts. Because my sense for subtlety has gone to shit over the years, and besides, ain’t nobody got time for that anyway, amirite?”_

_Steve snorts and silently marvels how easily Bucky has taken to the twenty-first century. Maybe it’s because he was awake sometimes, maybe the inner Bucky picked up info over the years and hoarded them like magpies collect shiny things. Whatever happened, it led to Steve being confused, and Bucky having meme-wars with Hawkeye. Steve also remembers the traumatizing day he came home and Hawkeye, Sam, and Bucky were rocking it to a 10 hours version of ‘They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard’._

_“Hey, punk,, I’m still talking to ya,” Bucky says and cuffs him over the head, in the way he always used to when Steve’s head was in the clouds, way back when._

_“Sorry, was just thinkin’,” Steve apologizes._

_“S’okay. Just, listen, yeah? Promise me that we will always tell it like we see it, okay? No metaphors, no sugarcoatin’, nothin’. Just the plain truth.”_

_“I promise,” Steve says and finally stands up, goes over, and kisses Bucky._

_“Ew, go take a shower. You smell like cold coffee,” Bucky says, and Steve laughs and drags him into the shower. They use up all the hot water._


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Bucky

“You German?” James asks, and wonders why that makes him feel nervous. He’s not the type to be xenophobic, so he really doesn’t understand the surge of distrust he suddenly feels.

“Swiss,” the guy says and then gestures to the blanket James is sitting on. “May I?”

“Why would you want to?” James asks and tries to assess the level of threat. Reality is not high on the realness scale today, so he’s not really sure if that guy is really there, but even if he is a hallucination, it never hurts to find out how threatening they can be.

“Because I can teach you to put that knife of yours to good use. I could also,” Bucky doesn’t like the way the guy is sounding, like it’s a gift that he’s here, “give you a new arm.”

“Already got one. Don’t like to use it, though, so what makes you think I would like yours?”

He turns away to search for some sweets he’s pretty sure he stashed last time he was up here. The ground seems to shake for a second, and when he looks up, Zola has vanished.

***

“The asset is close to dying and you try to implement program Zola? Are you stupid?”

The scientist controls some of the screens and glares at the tech.

“It seemed like an opportune moment. He’s weak, he’s vulnerable. He won’t die again, it’s just a minor hiccup,” the tech is trying to defend himself.

“I decide if that is a minor hiccup or not. We can’t stop his REM, not yet, we can only block the memories. And if that fails, the asset flatlines. Has done so the last two times you fucked up because you didn’t implement the right programs because you were too busy flirting with security when you should have watched the vitals. So don’t try to tell me it’s just a banality when this could well mean that the asset will cease to function completely.”

“We could use Zola to divert him. If the asset is too busy learning new things, the heart might not fail. We don’t know why the memories kickstart heart failure. We might at least try to stop it.”

The scientist glares once again, but she doesn’t argue further.

“Be careful. As slow as possible, the asset can’t get more agitated, you understand? And for fuck’s sake, the next time you stop the programming, at least do it with some style. Suddenly vanishing doesn’t exactly scream reality, does it?”

The tech nods, and goes to restart the program. Before he can do that, an alarm siren suddenly blares through the room, emergency lighting comes on and security starts to swarm the room.

“We’ve been made. You need to pack up, extraction is in five,” one of the soldiers informs the two, then proceeds to shout orders at other people, completely ignoring the angry tirade of science babble the scientist is screaming at him.

“Fucking Captain America,” the tech mutters and starts to save data. If they are not careful, this will blow up in their faces, but they don’t have enough time to be careful.

“I’m fully sedating the asset now, it won’t be pretty but we don’t have time for that. We need to come up with an explanation for that, and fast, before we restart programming. The asset is not stupid,” the scientist informs whoever is on the other line of her headset.

It all goes over surprisingly well. Luckily, the asset responds well to the sedation, so they might have an easy time to cover this all up. Two hours later, they are in the back-up lab and everything is running again.

“That was close. We need to finish programming, or they will get us next time,” the tech says, and gets glared at again.

“I already told the higher ups that programming needs time. We are rearranging reality, not just wiping memories. This is bigger. If this works, we won’t have to worry about the asset breaking conditioning again. There will be no one to break conditioning _for_ , when we’re done.”

“If you’re as good as you’re saying, that is,” a voice comes from the doorway.

“Ma’am,” the tech and the scientist both salute swiftly, their “Hail Hydra”s in perfect unison.

“Mission report,” the woman says.

“As I said, we need more time,” the scientist starts, but gets cut off.

“I didn’t ask you about time, I asked you about the mission report.”

“The procedure is going on along well, the programming is taking. There are still some minor problems, but we’re smoothing them out. We tried to implement program Zola to divert the asset from concentrating on breaking out, and it seems to be working. The asset also responds well to conditioning via imagery; we had a major break through a few days ago when he interpreted Captain America’s shield as a target.”

The scientist is clearly proud of that, but the woman doesn’t seem swayed.

“If program Simmons worked so well, why not try with another familiar face? There is still program Skye, isn’t there? Program Zola could antagonize the asset and provoke breaking out. And the last report said something about the asset’s vitals failing. That doesn’t exactly sound like everything is going like we’ve planned.”

“Program Simmons was designed to build trust, and we needed a positive reaction for that, hence the face. Program Zola was designed to foster aggression, a face that evokes positive feelings won’t work for that. Zola’s face is still familiar, by the way, but in a more negative way. While it undoubtedly will also foster distrust, we will be able to override that so only the aggression will stabilize. Program Skye is not yet done, we’re still waiting to find out what kind of specialization we will need.”

“The failing vitals?” the woman prods after it becomes clear that the scientist will not speak of it voluntarily.

“A minor hiccup,” the scientist answers. There’s a distinct snort from the tech, and the scientist turns to glare, then directs her speech to the woman again.

“The tech is useless, by the way. I suggest we get rid of him. I need someone who is actually able to do scientific work, not fuck up my progress.”

The woman nods and two men come to take away the tech. The screams echo in the distance. A shot falls, then everything is silent.

“I will provide you with new assistance soon. If the new tech fails again, I might start to believe that the techs are not the problem here, you understand?”

“Understood,” the scientist says and swallows visibly.

“We will talk about the vitals later. Prepare for a change of location in approximately three days. We can’t risk being made again, so from now on, the location will change every few days. I need you to account for that. Can you do that?”

The scientist nods and turns to the computers again.

“Fucking Captain America,” she murmurs under her breath as the woman leaves the room.

***

When James wakes again, he’s sure to have lost a few hours. The sun looks different, and by closer consideration, so does his environment. Something’s off, even if he doesn’t know what exactly. He could chalk it up on the reality not working straight, but whatever is wrong doesn’t _feel_ like the normal kind of wrong.

“Normal kind of wrong, my ass,” he says and looks for the guy. James pretty sure he vanished the last time he looked, but now the guy is sitting a few feet away, looking at his nails.

“You!” The man doesn’t react. “Zola. D’you happen to have the time? I think I was out for a bit.”

“It is nineteen o’clock,” Zola responds, then squints. “I mean, seven pm. I apologize.”

James shrugs the apology off and looks around.

“We were talking about something, but I can’t remember what it wa-“

_They want to hurt you they want to hurt me they want you to forget me they ain’t real nothing is real wake up wake up wake UP!_

James flinches and curls up into himself.

“Go out of my head, go out of my head, please, stopstopstopstop,” he stumbles over the ‘stop’s, can’t not say them and he’s losing count of how often he’s repeated the word.

His head hurts, his insides hurts and he’s pretty sure he can feel his heart stutter-stop-stutter a few times. He doesn’t know what is happening to him, he just knows that he needs it to _stop, right now_ , or he will go truly insane.

_Hurt hurt hurt they want you to hurt me don’t forget me don’t please don’t forget me please Bucky please_

“My name is not Bucky,” he says, and barely hears Zola in the background, asking, “What is your name, then?”

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes. I am twenty-nine years old. I am in Brooklyn. Steve Rogers doesn’t exist,” he says. He repeats it a few times until he realizes that the sentences are changing.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038. 32557038. 32557038. 32557038. 32557038.“

He doesn’t know where the numbers or the rank come from, but it feels strangely right to say them.

 

* * *

you can scream at me [on my tumblr.](http://thefreakfox.tumblr.com/)


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Steve

The shield crashes into a server that only gives a sad fizzle. Steve grabs the shield again, and again it crashes into the server. Tony thinks about telling Cap that the server has been destroyed five hits ago, but he’s still kind of benched because he’d rigged the comms so that everyone had to listen to Daft Punk’s _Lucky._ He’d thought it had been funny that he had Jarvis replace ‘Lucky’ with ‘Bucky’, but apparently Steve hadn’t thought so.

Instead of saying something he moves two rooms over, where Natasha tries to filch some data from the other servers. By the litany of curses, he thinks it’s not going well. All in all, the whole operation has been a bust; Barnes is not here, and whoever was with him has left, too. There aren’t even any stray interns to be found (Tony still doesn’t understand why people would want to intern with HYDRA when they could be with Stark Industries. He doesn’t even understand how people can do that. Do they just google ‘villainous internship programs’ and go from there?).

“I know it’s useless to ask, but do you need any help?” he asks Natasha when the silence gets too oppressive for his taste.

She only shoots him a dark look, and of course Black Widow would side with Cap, so Tony moves again until he finds Bruce, who looks remarkably dressed for someone who was a giant green monster only half an hour ago.

“You know, if you would apologize, he would maybe stop being angry with you,” he says before Tony can even open his mouth.

“I thought it was funny. I thought we could use some fun, everything else is depressing enough,” he defends himself.

“Sometimes fun things make depressive situations worse,” Bruce says, and as always when he says such things, he looks like he knows all too well what he’s talking about.

“What’s with the clothes, by the way?” Tony deflects and gestures at Bruce’s whole get-up.

“Bucky suggested I carry back-up clothing. He even came up with a bag that can carry everything, but doesn’t irritate the Other Guy too much.”

Tony looks hurt for a second.

“I am hurt,” he says, “I’m the one who invents things and builds unnecessary large floors in my tower for people.”

“You’re also the one with an AI butler that helps you get out of your suit,” Bruce says and turns away to squint at the screen of the gadget he’s holding.

“I can see no signs of a cryo chamber, so at least they didn’t ice him again,” he adds and squints again.

Tony makes a mental note to look into indestructible glasses for Bruce; he can still be the guy who invents things, even if Barnes seems to be helpful, too.

“Steve is going completely mental back there,” Tony says as they hear a loud crash, then Natasha scream, “Steve NO!”, and then another crash. The emergency lights flicker and go off.

“Oh this is great, I think Captain America just destroyed the supply network,” he adds.

“Your attention is once again truly Sherlockian,” Bruce says dryly, “How about you give me one of your lights?”

Tony complies, and together, they walk back to the other room, where Steve is now bashing a large chair into submission. Together with the red light from the glow sticks that lie on the ground, it looks more than a bit creepy.

“So I’m guessing this is-?” Tony asks, and Natasha nods.

“-where they held Barnes. It doesn’t look like they wiped him, though. At least I _think_ they didn’t, but I wasn’t finished with the data before _someone_ -,“ and boy, Tony never thought he would see someone glaring at Captain America, “decided to smash his shield in everything that looks halfway electronic and Hydra.”

“They used it to hurt Bucky. I don’t care what happens with it,” Steve says and now it’s really creepy, okay, more than _my-girlfriend-kinda-breathed-fire-creepy_ , because nobody should see Captain America in dim red lighting, sounding like a serial killer.

“You just compromised your own mission, you idiot,” Natasha says, apparently completely unimpressed by Steve, and that seems to reach Steve, because he stops for a minute.

Tony bets his sweet ass that Barnes used to talk to Steve in the same way.

“I did not,” Steve argues.

“Did too. Lucky for you, it’s not that important what they are doing to him, but where they are doing it; and you seem to have left the server with the different locations on it intact. Someone tried to delete the data, but did a shit job of it. I will probably be able to regain most of it, so let’s rig the place and get out of here,” Natasha says in that coolly efficient voice of hers that made Tony think she would be the perfect PA.

“Already done, I figured I would be more help down here than in the nest,” Hawkeye smugly says and twirls a lone stick of explosive in his hands.

They leave, and Hawkeye grins like a kid when the base blows up. Tony realizes that he doesn’t have his hearing aids in, and that’s clever, he has to give him that.

On the way to the temporary base they set up (no need to return to the Triskelion for now, as that might mean unnecessary travel time later on), Steve talks fireworks with Clint, or more exact, looking at fireworks while not really hearing the explosions.

Tony looks at them and sees, maybe for the first time, that Steve needs everyone just as desperately as he is. In some way, they all need each other desperately; they are all so broken in so many different ways that they need each other to be whole again.

“Ohana means family,” he murmurs, and Steve, bless his supersoldier hearing, replies without missing a beat, “And family means nobody gets left behind”; and it’s cheesy and two grown man shouldn’t be quoting Disney movies at each other, but Natasha smiles at them, and so do Hawkeye and Bruce.

***

They watch Lilo& Stitch that night, on a laptop screen that should be too small to give anyone a clear sightline, but somehow it works; and Steve feels like something settles in his chest. It’s absurd to feel like that in the situation they are in, but with the certainty he started fights back in the thirties because he knew that Bucky would come and save him (where other people knew not to start fights _they_ couldn’t finish, Steve knew not to start fights _Bucky_ couldn’t), he also knows that they will find Bucky, and they will get him home, and then their fucked up, broken family will be complete again.

In the morning, they start looking for intel on the various hard drives they secured from the Hydra base. The brunt of the work is done by Tony and Natasha, and Steve is left to his own devices; the devices being mostly drawing and thinking. The Hydra base was comparatively small to what he’s used to from the war, and even though he knows that’s also because Hydra operates undercover now, he can’t help but feel good about it. They may not ever clear the world of every Hydra agent that exists, but at least they can make it damn hard for Hydra to operate at all. And seeing them cower in a derelict building like rats is definitely a step in the right direction.

Just as he’s about to stand up and talk to the others about making a plan for storming the next Hydra base (it doesn’t matter to him that he doesn’t know where it is, yet. What matters is getting there in a way that will not alert anyone so they can get Bucky out), soft footsteps approach and stop right beside him.

“I know what they did – what they are trying to do to Barnes,” Natasha says.

Steve just looks at her, unable to ask. He wants to know, but at the same time he doesn’t, he’s too afraid to hear. But he will listen; he has to, if only for Bucky.

“For lack of a better word, they are trying to delete you.”

“They are what? You mean they wiped him again? That’s okay, he’s broken the wipe before, he can do it again, that’s no-“

“No. They didn’t wipe his memories. They are trying to convince him you are not real. Pretty smart thinking, if you ask me. They know he broke the conditioning because of you, and he broke the wipe for you, too. Figures that they would try to delete you completely at some point.”

Steve has the sudden urge to punch Natasha, even though he understands that while she is impressed with Hydra’s plan, she doesn’t like it. But still – it doesn’t sit right with him. He takes a few moments to close his eyes and even out his breathing, so his next questions won’t come out too scathing.

“How are they doing it? There must be some way to reverse it, right? _Right?_ ”

“I don’t know, Steve. I only have the personal log of one of the scientists – the lead scientist I think. She doesn’t really explain things, she mostly just writes about how awesome she is. There are no details on how they are doing it. She writes that they are almost done. But from what I can guess, she’s prone to overestimating herself, so we can’t be sure. I’m sorry Steve, but maybe you should prepare yourself for finding something you won’t like.”

Natasha moves to leave him alone at that, and going by the fire in Steve eyes, it’s probably the best for everyone’s health that Tony proclaims a few minutes later that he found the new base –

“Not a base, really, more like a barn. Which, if you think about it-“

“I know what you’re thinking, Tony, and don’t. Just. Don’t,” Steve says, and luckily Tony sees the white knuckled grip Steve has on his shield and shuts up.

Steve swears he hears him whisper, “But, _Barnes,_ ” as soon as Tony thinks he’s out of earshot.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Bucky

“Wake up, Bucky,” Steve says.

Bucky wants to keep his eyes closed, wants to stay rolled up, with his knees pressed against his head and his arm wrapped around his knees.

“Bucky, wake up. We don’t have much time. _Wake up_!”

“Don’ wanna,” Bucky mumbles.

Hands touch him, glide over his back. Gently, gently, Steve coaxes him into straightening up, until Bucky actually sits. Steve is small this time, so very small. Bucky fights the impulse to wrap him into his arms and put him in his lap; then he stops fighting.

“Hey!” Steve laughs as he lands in Bucky’s lap. He leans against his collarbone, and Bucky likes how Steve’s hair feels there. It looks so very shiny und fluffy, but it’s actually much coarser than people would like to think. Bucky loves that he’s the one to know that.

“Shut up, punk, and lemme cuddle you,” Bucky grins, but the grin fades as he feels Steve dig his fingers in his right arm.

“We don’t have time to cuddle. You need to listen to me, Buck. Will you do that for me?”

Bucky wants to argue, but then just nods.

“Okay. So. I know this will upset you, but I need you to listen very closely, and I need you to believe me, I need you to trust me on this, okay?”

Bucky nods again, even though he knows Steve is going to talk about Hydra, whatever that is –

_You know what Hydra are._ _You have to remember._

He jerks so hard he almost dislodges Steve, but he doesn’t seem to mind, just keeps talking.

“You’re dreaming, you know that, right? The thing is, when you will wake up, you won’t be awake. Not really. You need to wake up for real, and you need to do it fast. They took you from me, and they want to take me from you, too. Don’t let them do that…”

Steve seems to get lighter, and when Bucky looks down to see him, he is also growing translucent. Bucky wants to be afraid, but before he can be afraid, the dream seems to dissolve. The last things he hears are Steve words.

“Wake up. Don’t let them do this to you. Wake up."

\---

_“We’re losing him, we’re—“_

_“I told you it was too soon, I told you!”_

_“Shut up and do your goddamned job-“_

_“Pads are attached, everyone step back-“_

_“I think he’s trying to wake up-“_

_“Re-initiate the program, NOW”_

\---

James awakes with a shock, propelling himself into a sitting position, and even though he can’t really see for a second, he feels his eyes being wide open. His heart races and he rubs over his chest. He doesn’t have a clue where exactly he is, but that fact loses of importance as soon as he feels his stomach heaving.

After he’s barfed out the entire contents of his stomach – and wow, he really hadn’t eaten well these last few hours – he takes in his surroundings. He’s still on the roof. He’s also not dead, and given that he can’t really remember what happened before, that comes as a bit of a surprise.

“Ah, well, if I was dead I wouldn’t be surprised either,” he says to himself and chuckles, despite the fact that his head aches. He keeps hearing echoes of people’s voices, and it freaks him out a bit, so it’s no wonder that he actually jumps a few inches when he hears another voice close to him.

“That depends on whether or not you believe in an afterlife, no?”

“Zola? What are you still doing here? Why didn’t you call 911… wait, did I even need an ambulance?”

“I did not think so,” Zola says and James doesn’t like the implications of that sentence one bit.

“What did I do?”

“You cannot remember?”

“Well, I ain’t asking because everything that happened in the last two hours or so is crystal clear to me.”

“You seem to have a good grasp on how much time you lost.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, but thanks anyway. I think I’m gonna go now,” James says, and tries to not be too scared about the fact that his legs can hardly carry him. He feels like he hasn’t been standing on his feet for days.

_Wake up, Bucky_

“I need to wake up,” he says, and predictably, hears Zola answer, “You are already awake, are you not?”

“That’s the question, ain’t it?” James murmurs as he leaves the roof. He doesn’t bother saying goodbye to Zola.

***

_I need to wake up._

James is faintly surprised that this thought has apparently overrun his suicidal tendencies. Or maybe it hasn’t and his brain is now so fucked up that it equals ‘dying’ and ‘waking up’. He doesn’t have a clue what happened to him when he blacked out, and that’s slightly problematic, because for all his nonchalance about knowing that he’ll probably kill himself soon, he doesn’t like to lose time and memories.

He is probably going to meet Zola again, he surmises, and then he will _make_ him talk about it.

For now, though, he’s content to sit at the kitchen counter, grabbing what is his fourth coffee, and thinking about how to be _more awake_. Because he can’t really think of anything else, to be honest, being more awake sounded like a good plan to become complete awake, aka to wake up. He knows it doesn’t make much sense, but for now, that’s all he has.

He’s also tempted to google ‘How to wake up’, but he’s equally afraid of finding tons of Matrix inspired conspiracy theories or nothing at all, because people don’t need to know how to wake up, it’s a thing that just happens. Or maybe – what if Matrix was actually right? What if he just needed a pill to wake up?

“Because you don’t got enough of them already, right, Barnes? Pills to wake up, pills to sleep, pills to feel happy, and pills to calm down because now you’re too excited…”

Maybe he should just take them all and be done with it.

“Huh, apparently we are not done with the suicide business,” he says, and then, “we are also apparently now talking to ourselves and referring to us in the pluralis majestatis. Ain’t that fucking great.”

He pushes the coffee mug away– more coffee and he will probably puke out his guts again – and considers the liquor cabinet. He’s not known for drinking, and he’s also not known for being a particularly good thinker when he’s drunk, but in a way that TV and Hollywood has somehow ingrained in him, he sometimes yearns for a drink when he needs to think clearly.

Instead, he lays his head on the counter and closes his eyes. Maybe if he can remember –

_The room he’s in is unfamiliar. The people surrounding him don’t really spare him a glance. He tries to move, but can feel the restraints all too soon. His movement must have caught a person’s eye, because suddenly everyone focuses on him, people start yelling, and someone takes a syringe and injects him with something. He tries to struggle, but feels himself falling asleep –_

“I need to wake up,” he whispers, “I need to wake up.”

For the first time since he’s returned from the roof, he realizes that he’s alone in the flat. Come to think of, he hasn’t seen anyone since – probably since his mother left him at Dr Simmons’ office. Sure, his mother also knocked on his door just this morning, but right now it creeps him out that his family seems to have vanished completely; they are normally scared to leave him alone for five minutes and now everyone seems to be gone.

He stands up and goes through the flat, and every room looks like nobody has ever lived in them, including his own; and even though he’s not sure about the other rooms, he knows that his own was a real mess this morning.

“Fuckin’ creepy,” he mumbles and returns to the kitchen counter. At least here, the fact that he made coffee and left the mug out makes the room look lived in. Maybe the cleaning lady outdid herself, maybe it’s nothing, but the hairs in his neck stand up nevertheless. He needs to find a way out of all of this, because no amount of counseling is going to convince him anymore that this is reality.

“I’m coming for you, Steve,” he says, and the words give him strength, “I don’t know how, but you can bet your sweet ass that I’m coming for you.”

He grabs a legal pad and a pen and starts to make notes; they are still not very useful, but it gives him the feeling of doing something. What he knows is this:

1)      He’s pretty sure this is not reality.

2)      Everytime he died or almost died, or whatever the fuck happened to him on the roof, he got a glimpse of people that were hell-bent on making him unconscious again.

3)      These times coincide with the fact that he was stressed and/or full of adrenaline; the first two times because he was jumping off a bridge, and the third time because his mind was going berserk.

4)      Following that, he needs to acquire adrenaline to drug himself into waking up.

He squints at point four, not really convinced. It _does_ seem like a long stretch, he admits that freely, but he’s just _so fucking done_ with this reality that he doesn’t really care about the uncertainty of his resolution, he just does what every self-respecting tween with a smartphone and internet access would do: he searches ‘how to get adrenaline’ and, right after that, ‘where can I get epi pens’.

As it turns out, epi pens are terribly expensive, and he needs a prescription to get one.

“Of fucking course,” he mutters, feeling completely and utterly defeated. He doubts that a drug dealer will have adrenaline pens in stock; so he needs to find other ways to get one. Turning the phone in his hands, he thinks about tricking Dr Fitz into giving him a prescription, but even if the guy is not real, he’s so terribly nice that Bucky doesn’t want to do that.

Just as he’s about to change his mind about tricking Dr Fitz, he realizes that the solution was there all along: his sister is allergic. Given that his parents seem to be pretty paranoid about everything, there’s actually a good chance of them keeping one of these epi pens in a first aid kit.

Two hours later, he has finally found the first aid kit (predictably, it was in the cupboard under the sink in his own bathroom), and he’s on the roof again. But, most importantly, he is in possession of an epi pen. He takes one last look around the city lights blinking up at him, then does what the internet warned him about and injects the pen directly into his vein.

“I’m coming for you, Steve,” he says.

Then, James blacks out –

\---

\- And Bucky wakes up. His instincts kick in faster than he thinks (a voice in his head that sounds like Natasha reminds him that that’s why they are called instincts) and he brains the scientist closest to him on the chair he’s sitting on.

“Fucking Hydra and their fucking chairs,” he mumbles as he stands up, swaying. A short check provides him with the only thing worth knowing right now: his left arm is still a weapon, and even though he feels a bit queasy, he’s definitely able to kill. Several people have raised their guns, still hesitating to shoot, while others, obviously unarmed, try to flee the room.

“Just like the good old times, huh? Not that I can remember them, but whatever,” he announces to the room. No one seems to get the joke.

“This is really, really sad, guys,” he informs them. Then he takes the chair and throws it.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Steve & Bucky

_“The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, we don’t need no water, let the-“_

“Tony, get out of the fucking comms, it’s not funny.”

 _“But it’s_ true _!”_

Steve, exasperated because he’s trying to block Tony out, and Natasha _won’t stop punching his arm_ , takes his look away from the dashboard, looks out of the window and –

“The roof of that barn there is on fire.”

_“That’s not how the lyrics go, Cap, but at least you tried.”_

“That why you punched me?” Steve asks Natasha, who is also staring at the barn, and Steve remembers that one of them is actually supposed to fly the plane, so he initiates the landing sequence before anyone can make a joke about Captain America crashing a plane again.

“By the way, that is most definitely why I punched you.”

As they are landing, Steve’s confusion fades and cold dread fills his body; what if Hydra left again but wanted to eviscerate all evidence this time? What if they left Bucky there? What if-

“Hey, is that Barnes?” Clint asks, and Steve only confirms the direction in which he is pointing before he takes off, while Natasha yells something about ‘this is not what we have planned, Steve’ behind him. He hears Tony fly over him, and it irks him that he will be faster at Bucky’s side than Steve, but then the comms crackle and-

“Jarvis detects a heartbeat. Slow but steady. I guess your boyfriend is alive, Cap. As always, he also looks more like the beast than the beauty, but that hasn’t stopped you before, right?”

“Tony Stark, I am going to kill you, I swear to God…” Steve shouts, and he tries to be angry, but Bucky is alive, _Bucky’s alive_ and that means that Steve is happy, even when his fellow teammate is a douchebag. He ignores Natasha’s warnings over the comms, about how they don’t know if it’s a trap, they don’t know if Bucky is dangerous; Steve doesn’t care, just as he didn’t when Bucky first came to him after he had regained his memories.

He stops when he reaches Bucky, falls to his knees and hugs him, ignoring the blood and the smell of ash around him, just hugs him until Bucky starts pushing at him.

“Can’t breathe… Steve _… Steve_!”

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Is everything okay?” he asks, one question after the other, leaving Bucky no time to answer.

“Why is the fucking barn on fire, didn’t like it stealing your name?” Tony asks and Bucky coughs out a laugh.

“I’m okay, Steve, I’m okay, I’m not dying, the bullet went clear through-“

“They _shot_ at you?”

“They are Hydra, what did you expect them to do, throw flowers?”

“ _Bucky!_ ”

“Steve!”

“TONY!” Tony delightedly yells, and Steve debates buying a taser with enough voltage to short-circuit the suit.

Clint, Natasha, and Bruce arrive, and Bucky waves at them, as if this is nothing, as if it is normal that he gets kidnapped and then dismantles an entire Hydra base by himself. Steve reels for a second. He’s a serum-made supersoldier that was frozen for seventy years and his boyfriend is a mechanically enhanced ex-assassin, but the way that everyone is chattering away as soon as they see that Bucky is Bucky and not the Soldier again, like they are on a picknick in the countryside, is even too surreal for him.

He starts to laugh and hides his face in Bucky’s neck, his body shuddering; from the laughter, the bone-deep exhaustion, and the relief he feels, and Bucky just pats his head and says, “I know, Steve, I know exactly how you feel.”

Steve has to let him got then, at Banner’s insistence, because Bucky needs to be patched up, and Hydra is lucky that the barn is already burned to the ground, because Steve would gladly do it again.

“Did you get some intel?” Natasha asks as Banner is pouring hydrogen peroxide in Bucky’s gunshot wound. Bucky swears a blue streak, but throws her a small harddrive.

“They didn’t keep much here; I think it was only a temporary base. I’m guessing they fled the last base before you could hunt them down?”

“We’ll debrief later. Let’s just… let’s get out of here, yeah? Because no offense, Bucky, but you ain’t exactly smelling of roses right now.”

“Shut up, punk,” Bucky laughs. He lets Steve help him on his feet, and together they walk back to the plane.

When Steve and Natasha sit in the cockpit, she turns to him.

“You wanted to tell him something, when you got him back. What was it?”

Steve smiles. “You’ll see soon enough.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as pointed out by Chris, there was a mistake regarding Bucky's parents' looks. I fixed it now. Thanks again, dear person!

Epilogue/Chapter 11: Bucky & Steve

Bucky takes some time to get better – physically, he’s fit for duty three days after the whole drama, but mentally… that’s another problem. As much as he teases Steve with being too late to save him, telling him that almost the whole Avengers team is certainly a bit over the top for an extraction team, he’d just needed a ride home, thank you very much, he keeps having a problem with remembering that he is back in reality now.

“You know, they made this whole new – new _life_ , I was 25 when I woke up there and I lived there for four years. I had memories from a childhood that wasn’t mine, that I had never lived through. And I had parents and a sister – I think they read that somewhere in my file, but they got ‘em all wrong. My dad had your eyes and my mom had your hair, and seriously, I think Hydra is scraping the bottom of the barrel if their people are so fucking useless… they wanted to erase you from my mind, and someone gives my parents your looks. How fucked up and stupid is that?”

Bucky grabs Steve tighter, draws him in even more. Steve, even though he’s a bit uncomfortable – he is sitting on Bucky’s lap, and it’s not easy getting his big body folded so that his head can lie on Bucky’s collarbone, but apparently Bucky needs a teddy bear in Steve form right now, so that’s what Bucky gets.

“Shouldn’t you be… I don’t know, _happy_ that they messed up? Maybe otherwise… maybe-“ Steve swallows around the words, and now it’s him that holds Bucky closer, pressing his face into Bucky’s skin.

“Yeah I know. But I think I would’ve still grown suspicious. You were telling me not to trust them. I dreamed of you, you know?”

“You did? That’s cute, jerk.”

“Haha,” Bucky says dryly and bites Steve’s skin in retaliation. He ignores his yelps, and adds, “I think it was actually my subconscious or something. I don’t know. I talked to my therapist about it, and she says I’m probably right, but we won’t know for sure. I think my subconscious tried to tell me that Hydra was fucking with my head again, and because I know that the only person I trust more than myself is you, I made you up. You were small again, sometimes.”

“Yeah?” Steve smiles with the memory.

“I liked having sex with small Steve,” Bucky says and laughs at Steve when he sees the tip of his years turning red.

“I also really, really like having sex with how you’re looking now,” he adds, and Steve turns so he can look at him. He looks a bit sly now, grins at him and starts kissing Bucky’s neck.

“Yeah?” he repeats, and Bucky makes a really weird move because he wants to nod, but bare his neck at the same time.

“Yeah. I don’t have to worry about you having an asthma attack when you come now, that improves things.”

“Jerk.”

 

So, talking helps, and going through the files they stole from Hydra helps, too; he understands what they were doing to him, even though no one can figure out how they did it – especially the part where they managed to make him live four years in less than a week. Steve reminds himself that it doesn’t matter. Bucky killed the lead scientist, and after some consideration, the Avengers decide to destroy the information on the procedure. Technically, they should have given it over to Shield, but everyone agrees that this is something no one should be able to get their hands on, not even the people on the good side of the coin. Coulson and Fury are furious with them, but nobody really cares about it.

Surprisingly, it is Clint that comes up with a solution for Bucky’s reality problem. It’s a joke at first, but it seems to be working well enough: after watching Inception one too many times, he proposes that Bucky should make himself a totem. Bucky is doubtful at first, but does it anyway; clutching at every little bit of hope he can get. And it works, most of the time, and the other times, well –

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes.

I am twenty nine years old.

I am in Brooklyn.

Steve Rogers—“

He throws his head back into the pillow.

“Steve Rogers has his mouth on my cock.”

 

(Steve tells Bucky two months later that they could – well, they could marry if they wanted to. If Bucky wanted to, that is. Marry him, he means.

Bucky laughs. “At least you didn’t ask me to fondue with you, so I guess that’s an improvement. And of course I’ll marry you, punk. I thought you’d never ask.”)

 

THE END.

 

* * *

 

soooo... that's it, then. I'm thinking of doing a Marvel movie type extra scene, but I've got no idea what I could write, so suggestions are always welcome, either here via comment, or [on my tumblr.](http://thefreakfox.tumblr.com/)

Thank you for reading this story! I hope you liked it :)


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